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The Political Origins of Primary Education Systems: Ideology, Institutions, and Interdenominational Conflict in an Era of Nation-Building

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2013

BEN ANSELL  and
JOHANNES LINDVALL
BEN ANSELL*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
JOHANNES LINDVALL*
Affiliation:
Lund University
*
Ben Ansell is Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 1NF, United Kingdom (ben.ansell@politics.ox.ac.uk).
Johannes Lindvall is Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Lund University, Box 52, 22100, Lund, Sweden (Johannes.Lindvall@svet.lu.se).
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Abstract

This paper is concerned with the development of national primary education regimes in Europe, North America, Latin America, Oceania, and Japan between 1870 and 1939. We examine why school systems varied between countries and over time, concentrating on three institutional dimensions: centralization, secularization, and subsidization. There were two paths to centralization: through liberal and social democratic governments in democracies, or through fascist and conservative parties in autocracies. We find that the secularization of public school systems can be explained by path-dependent state-church relationships (countries with established national churches were less likely to have secularized education systems) but also by partisan politics. Finally, we find that the provision of public funding to private providers of education, especially to private religious schools, can be seen as a solution to religious conflict, since such institutions were most common in countries where Catholicism was a significant but not entirely dominant religion.

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Type
Research Article
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American Political Science Review , Volume 107 , Issue 3 , August 2013 , pp. 505 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013 

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